The present invention relates to a mobile telephone terminal for use in a mobile telephone system (MTS) and, more particularly, to a mobile telephone terminal having a function to perform a call clear process.
A mobile telephone terminal has an end key to end a conversation over a radio channel between a base station and the terminal. If the end key is depressed to end a conversation, the mobile telephone terminal performs a call clear process in which the terminal transmits a call clear signal to the base station and turns off its transmitter/receiver section. Upon reception of the call clear signal, the base station can immediately reassign the radio channel to other parties. But, if a power switch is depressed in place of the end key to end a conversation, the call clear signal is not transmitted to the base station. In this situation, since the base station which is monitoring the radio channel cannot determine whether or not the communication has finished, it must wait for a predetermined period of time. Only thereafter, the base station reassigns the radio channel to other parties. Thus, the radio channel cannot be assigned for the predetermined period of time even though the radio channel has already been available. This leads to the inefficient use of radio channels.